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Saturday, June 15, 2013

News from Göteborg

Today started out with some sad news. I planned on trying to attend church here at least once but last night the Latter Day Saint or Mormon church in Göteborg (Gothenburg in Swedish) caught on fire. I don't know if you'll hear about it in the U.S. news but the damage done was quite severe. It took them 2 hours to put the fire out so there is both fire and water damage. They don't know the cause of the fire yet but I hope things will be built up soon. I'm really grateful to Lisa's mom who has taken time to call and find out details and if I will still be able to attend church.

In other news: the food here is amazing. This was breakfast today.

Then we went to a park and had a picnic with Lisa and her friends. They are so nice and spoke English beautifully. We even heard some small children speaking English which was weird. I'm not used to hearing any English being spoken unless it's directed toward me. We even stopped at one of her friend's house and her family started speaking Swedish to me. When I just smiled they quickly realized I wasn't understanding and they asked "are you not Swedish?" Someone thought I was Swedish!!! I was actually really excited that I blended in so well until I spoke haha.

As usual, we took the tram all over today. Swedish teens are very independent because of the public transportation. I feel like Lisa and I say "okay we're leaving" and then we're told to be back for dinner at 7 and then we just go and do what we want. Very different from home. Especially because we don't have cellphones (both Lisa and I still have our US phones). Anyway, I need to explain the picture. We have cards that allow us to use any bus or tram in Göteborg. You just hold it up to the machine and it beeps. Lisa didn't want to pull out her card from her backpack so she just moved around until she heard it beep. It was quite entertaining.

I really like public transportation here. It just happened that Lisa, her friends and I were the only ones on that part of the tram at that time so I took a goofy picture. Oh and yes dogs are allowed. That's Lisa's friend's dog. She's very cute and pretty well behaved.

Then we went to the candy shop. Candy is really popular here but we ONLY eat it on Saturdays. That is a picture of the Lollipops. It is huge. Our candy shops DO NOT compare in the least.

Just rows and rows of candy. It's only about three dollars per pound (that's translated from Kronars and hectograms haha). Basically it's pretty cheap since it's ALL types of candy.

This is my bag of candy. It's deceptive because I got a good amount haha.

Lisa said I needed to be in one so this is in front of the shop. The candy is even piled in the window to the right. They (Lisa and her friend) made me hold all of the candy for the picture:)

The color is all wrong but one of the little things I love here is the yellow brick. It's much brighter in real life. It's just a really pretty color especially when it's up against the really green landscape.

Oh also Slender man left his party gloves in Lisa's room hahaha. If you guys have any questions email me or leave a comment!